BUFFALO, N.Y. — After withdrawing his guilty plea last month, Charles Jones has once again pleaded guilty to charges for the deaths of his girlfriend and his mother.
Jones pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter in court Monday.
Jones' ex-girlfriend, Jacquetta Lee, 25, was found dead inside her Main Street apartment on July 18, 2019, by family members.
The following month, Jones' mother, Alethia Atwood Williams,52, was found in a closet inside her apartment on Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo.
Jones was 24 years old at the time of his arrest. It came after a standoff with Buffalo Police outside his mother's apartment building.
Erie County Court Judge Sheila DiTullio told Jones as a result of his plea, "I have committed to a sentence on each manslaughter in the first degree of a determinate 25 years, with the post-release supervision of five years to be run consecutively. So you would serve 50 years."
Jones will be sentenced on June 15. He continues to be held without bail.
Jones originally pleaded guilty to the crimes, but for a year and a half, he had been asking to have his plea withdrawn.
The request was granted last month by Erie County Court Judge Sheila A. DiTullio because Jones didn't have adequate consultation with his former lawyers.
Attorneys who represented Jones in the past argued that due to the pandemic, they could not have confidential communication with their clients. As a result, they said they were not effective.
The judge stated in the decision that Jones was not afforded "meaningful representation."
"In reaching this decision, this court is not making a general pronouncement that all guilty pleas entered during the pandemic were somehow compromised; they were not," she wrote.
Curtis Lee, father of Jacquetta's father told Two On Your Side after court, "At least he did admit to what he has done and I'm comfortable knowing that he's accepted the guilty plea, but it's very uncomfortable sitting through this as it's been over three years."
He plans to speak at the June sentencing. "I would like to tell him that he could have chosen a better way. He didn't have to do all of this damage to himself and do this to his own mother and my daughter when he could have just turned and walked away to do something different and make better decisions."
Besides the death of his girlfriend and mother, his infant daughter Royalty also died. Police say that the investigation remains open. The baby suffered major head trauma according to family members after spending time in the care of her father in 2018.